1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for scanning, printing and reproducing documents. In particular, the present invention relates to a system and methods for encoding instructions and a form type into a document. Furthermore, the present invention relates to method for scanning a document, decoding instructions in the document and executing the decoded instructions.
2. Description of the Background Art
The use and proliferation of paper copiers is well known. Since their introduction, photocopiers have become and essential and basic part of every office and organization. Recently, the functionality of printers and photocopiers has converged into a new device referred to as Multi-Function Printer (MFP). Such multifunction printers have become commonplace and typically include the ability to scan documents, print documents, photocopy documents, and send and receive facsimile transmissions. This in turn has generated a large number of forms and papers that require organization and processing.
Long before the proliferation of copiers made duplication of documents easy and readily accessible, a number of forms were used to gather and organize information. Such forms are even in greater use due in part to copiers and allow the users to extract specific information needed for the performance of further actions or tasks. One difficultly with such forms is the ability to covert the forms into a format that is usable by digital machines such as computers.
The prior art has attempted to solve this problem with optical character recognition, but it is prone to errors and is very computationally expensive. For most applications, where there are millions of documents, such a solution is not acceptable. Moreover, the prior art has not devised a method for determining the type of processing that should be undertaken for a given document. Thus, there is a need for a system that is able to scan a document and provide automatic processing of the scanned image.
Therefore, what is needed is a system and methods for encoding instructions and a form type into a document, and responsive to scanning of the document, decoding instructions in the document and executing the decoded instructions.